A recent report revealed that a design flaw involving the PS5’s internal cooling system can cause permanent harm when the console stands upright.
Until recently the PlayStation 5‘s biggest flaw has been the inability to actually obtain one of the consoles. But now, a recent report suggests the console has a major design issue involving the liquid metal cooling system in the PS5 that causes a disastrous malfunction when the console is standing upright.
What’s more notable, is the malfunction is reported to occur very infrequently with each console not being perfectly identical to each other. The flaw can happen pretty quickly, or it may take years, or in some cases it may not even happen at all—similar to the infamous “red ring of death” failure from the Xbox 360.
While PlayStation’s Jim Ryan has stated the supply issues for the PS5 have since been resolved, this malfunction is still a big problem. The main issue seems to be that the cooling system in the PS5 involves the usage of liquid metal, and when the console is vertical, the cooling system wasn’t meant to resist gravity and the liquid can leak out causing irreparable harm to the console’s interior workings, ultimately causing a short circuit destroying the console. Notable French Technician with Twitter handle @68Logic posted photos involving the issue below on their Twitter:
A report from Wololo also mentions this design flaw can happen to both the physical and digital PS5 consoles, and mentions that even consoles not used and still in box can be affected by this design flaw. While Sony themselves have not posted any comment regarding this design issue, it appears all current PS5 models can be impacted by this issue.
While the Xbox 360 failure didn’t have an easy fix, this one appears to. PlayStation 5 owners merely need to lay the console horizontally for the time being until the issue at hand resolves, and while the report seems to have a good amount of evidence behind it, users should take the bad news cautiously until Sony directly addresses the issue themselves. In the mean time, I would lay the PS5 down flat for the time being just to be safe.
